Librarians oppose age recommendations for books

lisa2062 · Librarians oppose age recommendations for books

Librarians have thrown their weight behind the campaign to keep age ranges off children's books, saying they will ignore the classifications and describing them as potentially harmful to children's enjoyment of reading.

"Anything that puts a barrier between a child and a book is a problem," said Tricia Adams, chair of the youth libraries group at CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). "The issue for me is that when a child takes [an age banded book] out of a library they are then badged by their peers, who'll be saying 'that's for seven-year-olds, and you're ten'."

According to Adams, there is also a risk that confident readers will be put off books that are appropriate to their abilities. She stressed the importance of respecting the tastes and needs of individual children, rather than applying guidelines.

"I can understand [that publishers] are trying to make it easier for parents or relatives who aren't book buyers to buy books for children," she continued, "but the issue is how publicly it's done. If a book is arranged on shelves [saying] early or fluent reader, it doesn't apply an age range and it isn't categorising the child when they pick it up. But this is printed on [so you] can see the age it's aimed at."

Adams said that public libraries would ignore the classifications and shelve the books in the manner they felt was appropriate. Most libraries, she said, organise children's books in levels such as "picture books", "next steps", "stories" and "young adult", which labels the books by ability, rather than age. Moreover this information remains within library walls, and could not be used to categorise an individual.

The publisher-led initiative to introduce age guidance to books was announced earlier this year to howls of rage from the author community, which launched a campaign headed up by Philip Pullman disavowing publicly any link to age banding and describing it as "ill-conceived and damaging to the interests of young readers". So far over 800 authors are supporting the campaign, including JK Rowling, Terry Pratchett and children's laureate Michael Rosen.

Although the majority of children's publishers have signed up to age-banding, which has introduced recommended reading ages of 5+, 7+, 9+, 11+ and 13+/teen to the backs of fiction titles from this autumn, others – such as Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury and children's independent Walker Books - have not. Adams said she felt the discussions with publishers were likely to "run and run". "I think we'll end up with a situation where some publishers are using it and some aren't, which will be very confusing," she said.

Kate Bostock at the Publishers Association said that publishers were "looking forward to talking to librarians in more formal surroundings at [a libraries conference next month]". "We're obviously very anxious to hear everyone's views," she added. "Age banding is there for those people who really don't know [what book they want], and there are a lot of those people out there – a point which libraries have not really taken on board."

Last month children's minister Ed Balls advised caution in the area, and recommended that parents "seeking guidance about this contact librarians or teachers who know about the full range of children's literature".

heathera

That's an interesting article. I hadn't thought of age bandings putting children off reading. I still use them as a guide when buying books for children, so that I'm getting them something that should be relevant.

Karen

It is an interesting article I agree heathera. I too have always used the sectioning in bookstores to help choose appropriate books for children. I also do understand first hand how this sort of labelling can affect children who find reading hard for whatever reason. My eldest son is dyslexic and we had to work really hard at home to keep him interested in reading because the books he was issued with at school were just too babyish. To have had an age actually printed on the book would have just added insult to an already huge injury. Needless to say we found our way through. He listens to audiobooks for relaxation when he needs read for study but in his down time in the holidays he prefers to read for pleasure.